


Poetics about Finnick Odair and Death: Part 1

by bookxish



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Chess, Child Death, Death in general, F/M, its the hunger games after all
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 13:51:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16745206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookxish/pseuds/bookxish
Summary: In Games of survival and strategy, what does it take to survive?





	Poetics about Finnick Odair and Death: Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, I listed to the chess game from falsettos too many times. I also love this Dumb Fish Boi more than life. enjoyyyyyy

Death considered himself fair--not by the standards of time, for what was time when you existed in time immemorial? But by the rules of the game. Not unlike chess, Life is a strategy--one wrong move can prove fatal, and one right can change everything. Death, by far, was the longest, and best player. For He met them all--the meek and the mighty, the kind and the cruel. He had learned their weaknesses, their strengths, memorized their moves to the point of their identity becoming inconsequential--they all played and they all lost. Some put up a fight--some surrendered before the first move, but they all ended the same-- _ **Checkmate.**_

Or at least, they had. 

His footsteps made no sound on the flat, cold rock. It wasn’t earth--Earth was a mile below, under glass and metal and wire. A boy stood in the stream, lips blue, skin pale, water dripping from his clothes. He didn’t run, he didn’t even flinch as the black figure looked into his face. It was spattered in blood, his fists clenched at his sides. The body of his pawn laid prone, a thin river of blood running from the deep gash in her head down her face and neck, the rock that had captured her tossed aside.

The game begins. The first piece is captured. Leanne Howell is cleared from the board. 

Finnick Odair wins both games he entered the arena to play. 

 

In this time many believed when Death walked the earth, he took the face of President Snow. This was ultimately false--death made very few trips into the dirt with the insects-- but in the game, one will inevitably rely on some pieces more than other. 

Snow made a wicked knight--cutting and crooked and elusive, and just unimportant enough to lose. Reliance is where Death began to see the cracks in his opponent

Besides the King, the Queen was the most powerful piece on the board--able to make any move, and protected by every other piece at all costs. She had to be sharp, calculated, and know when it was time to attack and when it was time to flee. 

Annie Cresta knew how to fight the same way Death knew how to lose--not well. And he tended to exploit that--for after all, if you couldn’t beat your opponent by force, slowly bleeding them dry worked just as effectively. 

Snow drew her onto the board--she was easy, too easy, to draw into a snare. But Odair was more skilled than he had let himself believe, choosing instead to think luck had pulled him through this far. But he’d managed to save them both--to stave off the inevitable, and send his knight back to protecting his realm.  
Finnick looked at Death’s imprint in the eyes of his Queen and held her close to his chest. 

_Close--too close._

Time to start recruiting.


End file.
